Unwanted Mediation

Legend of the Five Rings card from Words and Deeds

Card Type

Strategy

Gold Cost

0

Card Text

Battle/Open: Target two or more Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player: Bow them. You may pay Gold equal to one of their Gold Costs; if you did and he is Unique, destroy him.
Battle: Destroy a Terrain.

Focus Value

3

Legality

Race for the Throne (Samurai)

Deck

Fate

Printings

Rules Q&A

• Q: Checking in to confirm a ruling I heard through the grapevine. Cards in question are copied / pasted below. Scenerio is: defender has all Crane ppl in a battle with a Scorpion personality at home. Question is: can the attacker legally play either card targetting a Crane person at the battlefield along with the Scorp at home?
  Dissension Cost: 0 Focus: 2 Unique. Battle: Target two or more enemy Personalities, each with a Clan alignment none of the others has. Destroy one of them. Bow the others. Battle: Draw a card.
  Unwanted Mediation Cost: 0 Focus: 3 Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain
  A: No, both personalities must be at the current battle per the first rule of the Rule of Location: "Any cards in units must be at the current battlefield to be legally targeted by a Battle action." Doruk Özaydın, "Dissension / Unwanted Mediation", 27 Jun 2008
• Q: Since unaligned personalities dont have clan alignments the can't be targeted by Unwanted Mediation correct?
  A: Correct.
  http://rules.l5r.com/Card_features#Diff ... e_keywords: "When comparing two cards, they have 'different' keywords if, when all shared keywords are ignored, each card has an eligible keyword the other does not."
  So you ignore all shared keywords (none), but only one card has an eligible keyword and the other doesn't. Zen Faulkes, "Unwanted Mediation and Unaligned", 15 Jun 2008
• Q: I am a scorpion clan player. On the opposing side there is two crane clan personalities. I play arranged marriage on one of them. He is now crane and scorpion clan. I now play unwanted mediation, bowing both of them. I can also play sowing suspicion on the scorpion one.
  Is anything in the above scenario incorrect ?
  Cards texts :
  Arranged marriage :
  Political Limited: A target Human Personality permanently gains your Clan alignment.
  Unwanted Mediation :
  Battle/Open: Bow 2 or more target Personalities with different Clan alignments controlled by the same player. You may pay Gold equal to one of the targets' Gold Cost, as a cost, to destroy him, if he is Unique. Battle: Destroy a Terrain.
  Sowing Suspicion
  Open: Bow a target Human Personality who is aligned to a Clan other than his controller's. He can not straighten until his controller's second Straighten Phase from now.
  Thanks for your time
  A: See Different and same keywords.
  Sowing Suspicion is legal, Unwanted Mediation is not.
  The personality targeted by Arranged Marriage "is aligned to a Clan other than his controller's," so he is a valid target for Sowing Suspicion.
  The personality not targeted by Arranged Marriage does not have a "different Clan alignment" from the other personality (Crane Clan and Scorpion Clan is not considered different to just Crane Clan), so he is not a valid target for Unwanted Mediation.
  Alex
  Mod edit: Potentially confusing quotations of changed sections of the Comprehensive Rules removed. If you have any further questions, please do ask them - ALJ. Alex Jones, "Arranged marriage and Unwanted Mediation", 2 Jun 2008